World of Warcraft®

Alright. This has actually bothered me quite a bit the more I think about it, and the best solution in my head thus far has been to stop RPing until Cata itself hits shelves.

I'm referring to the sudden massive changes in the world. More specifically, the new towns and inclusion of the new races. The natural catastrophes that will be popping up everywhere would make sense, since those are all a direct effect of Deathwing breaking free, and there's a few other changes that make perfect sense, but there's a lot that doesn't.
Orgrimmar was burning down as of yesterday, and now it's going to be a redone entirely. Wherever there's a sudden big battle like Southern Barrens and Stonetalon, the NPCs will be acting as if they've been waiting for heroes to come strolling through like it was any other day. Inclusion of the Worgens and Goblin, it would make sense if a few started to trickle in over time, but we'll be seeing full towns (and in the Goblins case, and entire region) affected by their appearance.

So how, ICly, are you the RPers going to handle this as far as story and timeline goes? Me personally, if I can avoid the topic of new areas I will, otherwise I think the best bet is to just claim they're under construction until December 7th, and we see the full game hit shelves.

Well, you can also think about it like you would a soap opera or some other serial TV show. Sometimes they need to skip ahead to when the non-boring stuff happens.

Yeah, all the fires happened and floods, and things got rebuilt..but during that time, that's really all people are paying attention to and worrying about. The catastrophes are the first priority of everyone involved, and little personal dramas can be put on hold.

You can go ahead and ignore the bits about Goblins and Worgens coming in until after Cataclysm hits, because at that point you can start equating all them showing up like you would after a catastrophe actually happens and you have all these other people slowly showing up in other places as refuges.

Also from what I read or heard online, the things that happen to the Worgen and Goblins happen at the same time the Cataclysm happens to everyone else, so maybe it takes them a month to recover themselves enough to come out and be part of the rest of the world.

I don't think you need to stop RPing or anything like that. Just think of it like a TV show, soap opera, or a play, because they don't always show every minute of every day either.

I would most definitely be fine with skipping ahead, acting as if X amount of time has passed, but you couldn't just do that is the issue. Because that'd have to be something that the entire RP community for the server would be on.
I mean, if we could get some sort of big thing where even all the RP forums dedicated to CC were to agree with the idea and ask their players to go along with it, there would still be a portion either in the dark or just ignoring it.

I'm fairly new to the server, but were I RP'ing regularly when the Shattering occurred, I'd be upset. While incredibly cool, the Shattering brings a lot to the table that breaks immersion.

I'm fairly new to the server, but were I RP'ing regularly when the Shattering occurred, I'd be upset. While incredibly cool, the Shattering brings a lot to the table that breaks immersion.

Yea, I mean, the Shattering brings a lot of new things for RPers, a lot of new settings and new things to focus on, but at the same time it kills the immersion for the first couple of weeks as forts pop up over night.

The easiest answer to all these questions, from an IC perspective is... "Heavy Drinking"*.

"Heavy Drinking" solves all KINDS of problems.

* - or in Plainswander's case "Mushrooms I found in Zangarmarsh....."

I believe there's actually going to be an in-game cinematic when we log in - depending on what it involves, it may actually solve this particular problem.

My gut says it'll probably be the same trailer we've seen for months now, but I do hope it is something else.

I tried to log in earlier and was greeted by the Cataclysm trailer. I hope Blazieth is correct about some tie in trailer once you actually enter the game.

Because the "nothing to see here" Wizard of Oz transformation between old Orgrimmar and new Orgrimmar would be hard to RP, at best.

I am not sure of the time line, but when we log in, it's definitely over a year to three years since the moment we logged out. This is not open for debate. It's only a matter of how much time has passed exactly.

What had me confused was when the Shattering itself happened in the time line. Are we logging in three years or so since the Shattering, or did the Shattering happen more recently, and it was only three years ago that we last logged out.

There's been time to rebuild at least, but Deathwing is still in the process of terrorizing us.
But there's no doubt about the fact that since we logged out last night, a year or more has passed.

And as a beta player, I can tell you that the Worgen and the Goblin starter zone begins before the Shattering and ( not really a spoiler)

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You get to see it happen first hand with all the pandemonium and panic that comes with it.
The worgen experience is pretty epic, and the goblin version of events is hilarious.

I'm fairly certain its not a month. Its more around 3ish years from the elemental invasion to the shattering, and everything being rebuilt.

And I really don't see the problem you guys are having RPing this at all. With this being an MMO, the majority of things we do and experience in this game happen in a vacuum with background and linking events we have to pretend happened in our imaginations. Every instance we do, every expansion that's come out, time has passed we had to account for. I don't see how this is any different.

There is one thing for sure:

It has been a total of Five Years since Vanilla WoW. This is stated several times in quests and such in the new 1-60 zones, the one I remember most clearly happens in Westfall, where an NPC talks about the fall of the Defias five years ago.

I recall as well it being said the battle of Hyjal took place ten years ago in a quest. And Varian's son Anduin is now a young man you will find when you enter the throne room.

I wouldn't say it's been a year... I'd say a few months at the most... I mean, if you read the Shattering Prelude that book takes place over a course of a few months. And none of that stuff has even happened yet (SPOILERS: IE Cairne and Magni + the overthrow of IF + TB; END SPOILERS)


Like people are saying, hopefully a new cinematic will be shown offering us RPers some...clarity. :-)

From what I've seen it will be officially 2 years since the death of the Lich King and 1.5 years since the Shattering.

Not months, so... this'll make for some odd RP for the next bit.

I was wrong it seems. I guess it is open for debate yet. It may just be a matter of months since we logged out after all. Time will tell.

So, we're expecting a lapsed time and an explanation from Blizz to sort out the time line, and we really can't make a call for the time being?
All we know is that time has more then likely passed since we logged off last night, otherwise the buildings popping out of nowhere and a freshly terraformed Azshara just make NO sense...

Alright. This has actually bothered me quite a bit the more I think about it, and the best solution in my head thus far has been to stop RPing until Cata itself hits shelves.

I'm referring to the sudden massive changes in the world. More specifically, the new towns and inclusion of the new races. The natural catastrophes that will be popping up everywhere would make sense, since those are all a direct effect of Deathwing breaking free, and there's a few other changes that make perfect sense, but there's a lot that doesn't.
Orgrimmar was burning down as of yesterday, and now it's going to be a redone entirely. Wherever there's a sudden big battle like Southern Barrens and Stonetalon, the NPCs will be acting as if they've been waiting for heroes to come strolling through like it was any other day. Inclusion of the Worgens and Goblin, it would make sense if a few started to trickle in over time, but we'll be seeing full towns (and in the Goblins case, and entire region) affected by their appearance.

So how, ICly, are you the RPers going to handle this as far as story and timeline goes? Me personally, if I can avoid the topic of new areas I will, otherwise I think the best bet is to just claim they're under construction until December 7th, and we see the full game hit shelves.

If you read The Shattering, you'll notice that Orgrimmar actually wasn't completely burned down, just severely damaged. It's feasible to assume that the Orgrimmar from the start of Vanilla has been slowly (and to us, invisibly) become what it is now, the fire just jumpstarted the process. How was it rebuilt so quickly? Goblins. Who overcharged the Horde for the job because they knew they could get away with it.

The world has been changing over the last 7-8 years since Vanilla started, we just haven't seen it happening.

So I prefer to view *most* of the changes as having gradually happened.

Now the cataclysmic damage to the world... that happened today. When that guy Deathwing shocked us all (who thought he was dead) by bursting out of the elemental plane of earth and breaking the entire world.